


Feel the rain

by Tiefschwarz



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo might though, Emotions, F/M, ForceBond, Kylo isn't crying, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rain, Reylo - Freeform, Vignette, boys don't cry, natural wonder, no, who told you that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-18 00:59:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13089108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiefschwarz/pseuds/Tiefschwarz
Summary: In-movie TLJ reylo vignette reimagining the forcebond connection that happens during the rain on Ahch-To, or how the joy of one can be simultaneously hurting the other. But the Force heals them all, right... Right?





	Feel the rain

Ahch-To is positively impossible as it is everything Rey has never known in her entire life. Water – the ultimate treasure – is not worshipped as such, cannot be worshipped as it is everywhere (whereas sand is pretty much nowhere to be found) – yet every time Rey comes to close contact with nature, she cannot help but revere her surroundings as they’re just too much of an outer world despite Rey being purely within it and in close connection with every wonder it has to offer – just have your eyes open and follow the song of the wind, the breath of air and smell of water – the most beautiful scent out there, overwhelming all other scents with its raw purity and ubiquitous presence – a feeling Rey cannot seem to ever be getting enough of, even with water being aplenty. 

This is truly impossible, and yet it surrounds her, the sea with lullabies in its waves that remind Rey to calm down and listen up to her surroundings, yet more often – with loud storms that make her uneasy – and are also reminding her. Reminding of quite the same things – to listen and be attentive, yet not for the same reason. There is danger seeping in that storm, the danger of unknown that has become known all too well in their recent encounters – the void and the mystery opening up amidst the soaring masses of water, and the searing voice in her head.

Bracing herself for the inevitable, Rey isn’t going to let him distract her from the beauty nonetheless – he’s perhaps had it too much in his surroundings before to have it discarded so easily in favour of the bloodshed that is now his joy of choice, the lust for destruction reeling in his motion every time they used to meet – up until the very recent when there’s something else entirely rising its head above the dark waters, something which Rey cannot yet name and isn’t sure she wants to know it – but there’s this trick of the Force Luke has never ever mentioned to her, and it’s working its strange engines in the gathering storm as Rey can feel the power concentrating and about to strike just as the sky is torn apart with thunder.

There are clouds swirling in erratic motion, both impending and captivating – and though the dry thunderstorms were of no wonder back there on Jakku – this isn’t for the thunder alone but for what arrives afterwards. Water. So much water it’s impossible to stand back in the dry confides of the hut or in the safe space under the Falcon and just watch – no this is positively out of limits to just be the witness, with eyes disconnected from the soul of the world. There is Force, so much raw and untamed Force in this water falling like solid walls of earnest stone upon her, that Rey cannot deny its pull, won’t deny it and won’t hide from it. She enters the downpour as she would enter the temple – the roar of thunder is its sacred chants and the pillars of rain are like columns reaching out into the divine Rey has never come to know or feel before – she can sense it now.

She senses its natural grandeur, reveling in the rough and cold liquid lashing out at her like the whip – but no anger or evil is behind that pain the water hits her with – yet in this raw sensation Rey is quick to recognize another presence – the one she has come to learn the pattern of no matter the surroundings. And it’s reaching out to her through all her holy armour of raging winds and roaring skies – coming straight at her, stubborn and seeping with danger just like any other time they meet.

Rey senses him right there behind her, in the safe calm air under the spaceship, air devoid of external water, yet moist and filled with nature’s perspiration nonetheless. She wonders if he can feel it the way she feels it – with her entire body and soul. If he is even capable of feeling like this – with all his essence – of feeling something other than rage. Rage that masks hurt and resentment all too badly for them to be blatantly obvious on his ever so expressive face.

Rey doesn’t ask, however, and waits. His presence is like a growing pressure, and silence doesn’t tend to stay long. It feels like a sin against something intrinsically sacred to pull away from the rain and make that one cursed step back into the dry, into the unease of their conversation with unknown outcome – never predictable and always bewildering. He doesn’t speak however, staring back at her with something akin to wonder – if Rey hasn’t known better than that. What kind of a wonder it is for a patricide murderer like him, what kind of magic is there left for the one monster whose head is all messed up and ideals churned to the total inability of telling wrongs from rights – what is the wonder for the renegade?

Oh Kylo could share the insight with her only he’s too overwhelmed to speak at the moment. This is just the rain on an unknown planet lost in the nowhere system in the outer rims packed with such forsaken nowheres. This is just that scavenger standing in that rain, soaking in it – reveling in it like it’s some kind of a holy benediction swimming at her and all around her bestowing the world around her with its energy and… Light. There cannot be light as the nature is neutral – at least this is what Kylo has thought before. He sees it now – the glow that isn’t physical – it’s scintillating around the girl as if forming a call, as if luring… whom? Him? Luring him to what? What, hasn’t he seen and felt the rain before?

But not that rain, apparently. Something about the girl from a desert put in an absolutely foreign contrasting environment – something about her reacting to all of this naturally alien and unknown to her – something he hasn’t seen ever before but in the earliest of his own childhood memories Kylo has thought he has long since burnt away from his memory – that childish sense of wonder, of a miracle happening – right in front of them, and nature being so generous as to invite them to celebrate this miracle with it and partake in its festive rites – this is definitely something Kylo was not prepared to see – neither through her eyes least of all through his own.

Yet the Force dragged him here (or so he entertains himself with explaining the real nature of their strangest connection) right into the core of a wonder – a wonder he has never asked for, as there’s no place for such folly in the life of an apprentice, an apprentice who has been close to utter failure so many times – his wonder is his being alive despite all those failures, his wonder is the blood pumping hard though his heart and the Force surging mightily through his entire being – and definitely no wonder is that endless turmoil in his mind – but somehow, for some uncalled reason the turmoil settles down even if the storm keeps on raging outside.

The turmoil settles down, and Kylo feels it like – like a fresh breath, like an iron curtain opening up a little bit – a feeling as unfamiliar as it is suddenly so anxiously welcome from within his very core – as Rey looks up at him – clearly unwanting to do so, wary as usual when their connection kicks in – and nonetheless unable to hide her joy, this feeling they have never shared before (as what should the conditions be for such weirdness to transpire?!) – but apparently do share, now.

Kylo would recognize the joy like no other – this is worse than a thunder striking him down, this is something he has vowed to forsake for the quest of power and meeting his mentor’s requirements, this is worse than a rain in the desert, a sense of water to a child of sands – this is the lightning hitting straight through his heart – and even worse than that – it brings no pain, no welcome pain with it, but serenity and… Empathy. Compassion, the dreaded hated word, his curse and downfall – he does indeed feel this compassion now, full-force and cannot stop this – as there’s that pure joy to be compassionate about.

And that trickster of their force bond, the weird asset with seemingly its own designs for the both of them – that bond seems to sing! To sing like a livewire but with no death threat in its electricity, to sing in that joy Rey cannot hide as this is her essence now – be one with the Force they teach you, and here’s how the students take on these lessons, drowning in the sensation entirely to their own abandon – and Kylo suddenly knows with outstanding clarity he’s drowning too – and welcome is his drowning.

Swimming in the emotion, one Rey cannot stop from being shared, one Kylo cannot prevent from being cast upon him like the blinding light of something so much huger than just rainwater and its natural rawness; the stupefying spell breaking all of the chains Kylo has never realized have even been upon him and all around him – the staggering sense of joy making its way into his heart – he realizes his heart is going to betray his mind right in the very moment. And then Rey looks back into the rain.

There’s something going on behind her, something she, for some reason, doesn’t dare intruding on. This isn’t about any kind of a malevolent intent – not anymore. She recognizes the inner turmoil within Kylo as she would within herself – and lets the rain wash away the worries from her face, knowing suddenly full well he would feel it – that water and its cleansing powers, the joy he could suddenly take as his own under her inspiration, and the way it has struck him. Struck with no pain – which made it all the more unbearable, for someone who has tried to close his heart and cut down on the emotions – to understand all too well the emotions do win in the end, win and overwhelm, and your own heart is being absolutely merciless about it.

Rey knows she is compassionate. Rey also knows she’s anything but sure about her course of action at the moment – and when she turns back yet again she also knows another thing – this isn’t the rain on Kylo’s face. But her own face is washed with wonder, the force of nature and the Force being one engine propelling her to make that one step closer in that distance which is suddenly too huge between them and Rey is willing to believe it is really rain – for his own sake, this time. 

Her joy is glowing through her skin and evident all about her being, her joy is genuine and naïve – all of the emotions that are designed exactly to bring him pain, the self-inflicted kind, one that only makes it worse – the pain he has to endure to be able to open up again one day. For Rey, the temptation to swipe the raindrops away from his tumultuous face together with the anguish they bring is suddenly overwhelming her – or is it their connection playing tricks on her as why else would she even want to touch him – of all people?!

She must be staring too hard, too curious – like a child unaware of the troubles of the world, one happy with the rain she’s never seen before – but children too can be cruel sometimes – just like in this very moment when Kylo can shut off their bond and let the vision of him disappear in the thin air, can turn away and do virtually anything – and yet he lets her see. 

This is his conscious choice to let Rey see him – like this, with rain acting as the fake excuse they both know for being an excuse, and poor at that – and Rey can only share this one new feeling with him, the staggering expanses opening up for the both of them within the initial joy and wonder, the nature triggering that which is so much more universal yet at the same time intimately private among them, like the treasure one is both yearning for and afraid to touch. What if it works? What if it’s worth it? Rey knows for sure this isn’t rain anymore, and she’s crying too, as there’s nothing to hide, not anymore.


End file.
